Viewing entries in
Uncategorized

The End of Love

The End of Love

An Anti-Assimilationist Valentine's Day

I know I don't have to tell you that February 14th is barreling towards us at superluminal velocity. You also may know that if you're not in a romantic relationship, you might as well crawl back into your lair and resume braiding your body hair or filing the fingernails on your dewclaws, or whatever it is that single people do, because how dare you attempt to join the ranks of those who will not be dying alone.

But if you do, however, happen to be in love, well I'm sure you know better than to erect anything less than the most stunning and enthusiastic tribute to your beloved, replete with chocolate, champagne, sex in more than one position, and possibly a proposal.

Am I right?

Unless of course, you're not in the business of celebrating corporate sponsored heteronormativity, underwritten by Hallmark, self-hatred and comfort pastries; or the holy day also known as Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day -- destroyer of all things -- is a celebration of everything that's wrong with our rendition of modern love. There's nothing quite like this arbitrary event to magnify our expectations, diminish our relationships and test our self-esteem. Come February 1st, convenience store aisles, awash in the empty symbology of romance, close in on us with one message, and one message only:

Continue Reading at Huff Post

Read More
A Hater’s Guide To New Year’s Resolutions

A Hater’s Guide To New Year’s Resolutions

(a.k.a. Self-improvement through self-acceptance)

New Year’s Eve is that special time of year where we resolve to become less like ourselves and more like other people. Better people. More suitable people. Perfectly hydrated, voraciously reading, paleo dieting people.

It’s a time-honored tradition in which we salute the passing year by piling unrealistic hopes and expectations on the back of the year to come, and we look to the future with a gut-churning blend of happy optimism and indestructible self-loathing.

In theory, New Year’s Eve should be a time to review our year and celebrate our accomplishments; A night to forgive our shortcomings and give boozy toasts for better days to come.

But for the 45% of Americans who still make resolutions, New Year’s Eve is a not to be a missed chance to alter ourselves in arbitrary ways that only seem reasonable when much of the Western Hemisphere is also doing it.

Do you want to know the best thing to happen to New Year’s resolutions? It’s called February. If January is the month of change, then February is the month of giving up. By the time February rolls around, with that knowing smirk on its face, more than a third of us have abandoned all hope and returned to our overwhelmed and under-hydrated lives. According to a recent survey by the University of Scranton, only 8% of us are eventually successful at keeping our commitments.

As you may be able to tell, I hate resolutions.

Keep reading here...

Read More
The Fight You'll Never Win

The Fight You'll Never Win

GET THIS. SOME OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS HAVE NO SOLUTION.

 That’s right. No matter how many fights you get into, or how many different ways you find of saying the same thing, you and your partner will not make it better. That thing you’ve fought about from the beginning of time? It will probably stick around until the end of time. It will stay bad, painful, annoying, or ridiculous, literally forever.

According to research, most of our relationship problems, 69% of them in fact, are unsolvable.

Why? Because, says relationship researcher John Gottman, they are based on deeply ingrained differences in personalities and needs. i.e.Olivia Pope herself couldn’t fix them.

So, how do you know if you're dealing with a perpetual problem?

Read More
The Hell Word: Overcoming your fear of I Love You

The Hell Word: Overcoming your fear of I Love You

There's a point in a relationship when you feel like a nuclear bomb is about to explode inside your throat. Like you’ve swallowed liters of Pepsi and chased them with Alka-Seltzer. Like Miley Cyrus is swinging on that good old wrecking ball of hers, aiming for your pathetic little heart. This is the horrifying instant, in which the words “I love you,” want to pull a geographic from your mouth, and into the perfectly shaped ears of your beloved. 

Some of us relish hearing and saying these words. We feel brave, uplifted, open, and closer to our partners. Brene Brown defines vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”If this isn’t it, I don’t know what is.

TO OTHERS, HOWEVER, THE THOUGHT OF TELLING SOMEONE WE LOVE THEM IS ON PAR WITH WATCHING A HOME VIDEO OF OUR OWN CONCEPTION, WHICH OUR PARENTS ADMIT, GOT PRETTY WILD. 

Read More
Fight or Flight Club

Fight or Flight Club

THERE'S ONLY ONE RULE AND IT WILL SAVE YOUR LOVE LIFE.

So I'm having a conversation the other day with a lovely human being. She and I are in her car, blithely arguing about systems theory or flash mobs. I'm almost certain that I'm right and she's wrong, as is so often the case between us.  

Thanks to my interest in neuroscience, I happened to know that my autonomic nervous system was doing it’s thing, via my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems which were regulating my cardiac and vasomotor activity, balancing my cortisol levels, and integrating input from my limbic system. In a nutshell, keeping it real. 

SUDDENLY, THIS LOVELY HUMAN ACCUSES ME OF GETTING DEFENSIVE.

I was doing no such thing, so I might have snapped back and told her that the British woman inside the GPS system was better attuned to me than she was, and that her ability to be wrong so many times in a row was as impressive as it was sad.

Read More
The Trampire Diaries

The Trampire Diaries

Why slut-shaming is ruining your sex life!

So it looks like KStew and RPatz are back together. Huge sigh of relief. Order has been restored in the sleepy hamlet of Hollywood.

As an 11 year old friend of mine says, "sometimes people in movies fall in love." True. And sometimes, people in movies have a hard time in their relationships. Sometimes people in movies put on their matching Chinese cashmere Snuggies, sit in their Spanish Revival style living room, underneath an original collection of Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs, and have a come to jesus conversation about the state of their union.

So Snow White had a not so snow white moment. 

Why can't we leave it at that and admire K-Rob for their capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation? Kristen is being slammed in the media for (gasp) having cheated on her boyfriend. A 22 year old cheating on her boyfriend? What a way to devastate the nation.

Read More
It's National Coming Out Day bitches!

It's National Coming Out Day bitches!

IT'S TIME TO CELEBRATE YOUR GAY STRAIGHT QUEER BI TRANS QUESTIONING POLY PAN ASEXUAL SELF.

The coming out process is as diverse and unique as the individuals experiencing it. For a few of us, it’s like ripping off a band-aid: mildly painful, but quick. For most of us, however, it’s a continual process of unwrapping a gauze that encircles all aspects of our lives. Sometimes we are pushed out of the closet by external circumstances. At other times, we simply put one foot in front of the other and walk out on our own.

OTHERS OF US DON’T COME OUT UNTIL THE PAIN OF “STAYING IN” HAS BECOME UNBEARABLE.

The benefits of coming out are great, but they might not be quickly or readily apparent. It’s unlikely that we’ll make an announcement over our school intercom, to the sound of wild applause. We don’t get a shiny new toaster for being the 500,000th person to come out. But the bounty of inner cash and prizes is magnificent. It comes in the form of self-respect, integrity and congruence. We stop relating to ourselves as if we were broken, flawed, or perverse and we can finally release the dead weight of our secrets.

Read More